Eileen Nearnejoined
the Special Operations Executive in Britain as a radio operator. Two
of her siblings also served the SOE. Only 23 years old, Nearne was
dropped by parachute into occupied France to relay messages from the
French resistance and to arrange weapons drops. She talked her way
out of trouble several times, but was eventually arrested by the
Nazis, tortured, and sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Yet
Nearne stuck to her cover story. She was transferred to a labor camp
and escaped during yet another transfer. Once again, Nearne talked
her way out of trouble when confronted by the Gestapo and hid in a
church until the area was liberated by the Americans.

After
the war, Nearne was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French and was
made a a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by King
George VI. She suffered some psychological problems and lived a quiet
life with her sister Jacqueline (also a British spy during the war)
until Jacqueline's death in 1982. When Eileen Nearne died in 2010,
her body was not discovered for several days, and her wartime
exploits were only revealed after a search of her apartment uncovered
her war medals. Nearne was then given a hero's funeral.

Unlike many of the young girl snipers of the Soviet Army, Lyudmila Pavlichenko was an accomplished sharpshooter before joining the military. She was older than the others as well, and was in her fourth year of study at Kiev University when war broke out. The Russian Army sent around 2,000 trained female snipers to the front during the war; only around 500 survived. Pavlichenko had by far the greatest war record of them all, with 309 confirmed kills, including 36 enemy snipers. And that was accomplished by 1942! Pavlichenko was wounded by a mortar and pulled from the front. Because of her record, she was sent on a public relations tour to Canada and the United States to drum up support for the war effort and make an impression on the Allies. She was never sent back to the front, but served during the remainder of the war as a sniper trainer. Pavlichenko earned the title Hero of the Soviet Union. After the war, she completed her university degree and became a historian and served on the the Soviet Committee of the Veterans of War.

Princess Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan had a particularly distinguished background. Her father was Indian Sufi master and musician Inayat Khan; her mother was American Ora Ray Baker, the niece of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, and her paternal great-great-grandfather was the ruler of Kingdom of Mysore. Noor was born in Russia; her younger siblings were born in England. She held a British passport, but lived in France when Germany invaded. The family was able to escape to England ahead of the Germans, and Noor Khan joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). The British intelligence agency SOE took her as a wireless operator and sent her to France in June of 1943. There, she transmitted information out of France by Morse code. She refused to quit, even as other radio operators were arrested. Khan was arrested in October by the German intelligence agency (SD) and fought them so fiercely that she was classified as "an extremely dangerous prisoner." A month of interrogation yielded no information about Khan's SOE activities, and she even sent a coded message about her compromised position (which the SOE ignored). However, the Germans found her notebooks, which gave them enough information to send false messages and lure more British spies to France and arrest. In November, Khan escaped briefly, but was caught and then kept in shackles for ten months. In September of 1944, Khan was transferred to Dachau, where she was immediately executed along with three other female SOE agents.